Washington — President Obama said today that he would sign a $410-billion spending bill for the current fiscal year, despite its thousands of academic and other earmarks, and he laid out his plan for earmark reform.

The bill, which the Senate passed last night, would provide substantial budget increases for student aid and research. It also contains 8,500 earmarks — noncompetitive grants inserted by lawmakers for their favored constituents — that are worth some $7.7-billion, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

“I am signing an imperfect omnibus bill because it’s necessary for the ongoing functions of government and we have a lot more work to do,” Mr. Obama said. “But I also view this as a departure point for more far-reaching change.”

Among those changes, Mr. Obama said, would be the end of the awarding of earmarks to for-profit companies. Such awards, he said, are “the single most corrupting element of this practice.”

Under his plan, Mr. Obama would also require earmark requests to be listed on lawmaker’s Web sites, and would make earmarks open to scrutiny at public hearings. —Kelly Field